Taxpayers are on the hook for government failure to tackle illegal Channel crossings

SIR – The situation in the Channel is a crisis of successive Conservative governments’ making.

Four years ago, when the first boats started arriving on our shores, the response should have been swift and sharp. A processing centre should have been set up on the French side of the Channel. Any migrants who then attempted to cross would have known that they would be returned to the processing centre. They would then have had no right to stay and the people smugglers nowhere to turn. This should still be considered.

After the devastation caused by the lockdowns some hotel owners in this country have capitalised by agreeing to long-term contracts with the Home Office, which has played fast and loose with taxpayer money in order to house migrants. Hotel owners will never again have the opportunity to have 100 per cent occupancy guaranteed and paid for, so who can blame them?

Apart from Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, the Government has not grasped the severity of what is happening.

Martin Baker

Tadworth, Surrey

SIR – Surely it is time to reconsider giving ID cards to all lawful citizens. In 2006 Labour tried to introduce them and the Right threw up its hands in anger. Much debate followed and the Act was repealed in 2011.

Channel migration – whether by those seeking amnesty or economic access – is out of control, and the Home Office response is totally ineffectual. The issuance of ID cards to all legal citizens and residents of Britain would bring back some measure of control. Jeremy Spencer-Cooper Easebourne, West Sussex